


Stem The Tide, Watch It Flood

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent Lives, Bathing/Washing, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: Her hands had been steady during the fight. She was always steady during the critical moments, she made sure of that. It was in the after that she let herself fall apart a little bit. When the danger was past and everybody she cared about was safe, that was when she could feel all the panic and helplessness that would cripple her in the moment, only worse for being denied so long.Compartmentalization was a bitch like that.But it wasn’t time for that yet. Not until Derek was in the clear. Not until Derek had healed from all the blows he had literally thrown himself in the way of.





	Stem The Tide, Watch It Flood

**Author's Note:**

> my first Dallison fic!!! well actually the third one i've started, but the first i've actually finished so officially it's the first!! this is very exciting for me cuz i ship it so goddamn hard. so here's some angst and feels =)

It was a struggle to fit the three of them up the stairs to their apartment, especially when Derek wasn’t quite healed enough to walk on his own yet, but they managed it. They sort of lurched up sideways with Allison in the lead, Derek between, and Scott in the back to take most of his weight. Stiles had run ahead with Allison’s keys to open the door for them.

He was waiting with his thumbnail in his mouth, watching them approach with worried eyes. Allison gave him her most reassuring smile. He didn’t _look_ particularly reassured, but he wasn’t really the type for that so it was okay. They would all feel better in the morning when they could see for themselves that Derek’s wounds had closed up and he was alright.

Inside, Derek let Scott prop him up against a wall and waved him off. Scott and Stiles both hovered, half-inclined to stay and keep an eye on them just in case.

“You guys get back,” Allison said. “Scott, I’m sure Liam could use support right now. And Stiles, your dad is gonna need some help with the cover-up.”

Stiles sighed, looking more tired than Allison liked seeing, but he nodded. Scott looked tired too. Add to that the blood—both Derek’s and his from mostly healed wounds of his own—and it was the sort of tableau that occasionally made Allison consider bundling them all into a van and getting the hell out of this town.

“Are you sure?” Scott asked, glancing between her and Derek like he wasn’t sure which one he was more worried about. “One of us can stay if we need to.”

“Go, Scott,” Derek said. “I’ll be fine. You know I will be.”

“Yeah, you’re always fine, aren’t you?” Stiles muttered, a trace of accusation in it. Allison understood the feeling well. Still she led the others to the door, gave them one more platitude, and shut it behind them.

For a moment she stayed where she was, forehead leaned up against the cool wood, and breathed. When she was sure her hands wouldn’t shake, she raised her head and turned back.

Derek was watching her, face shuttered and blank. It was far from the first time she’d seen that expression on him, but she never liked it. He didn’t get that way very often anymore either so it was doubly discomfiting.

But the blood was more concerning for now. The slice in his side had largely closed up during the car ride over, though it would be tender and achy for hours yet, but the gash on his thigh was still seeping sluggishly. His clothes were ruined and he was bloody and grimy from head to toe after so much getting thrown around.

Frankly, Allison was bloody and grimy too, even if very little of the blood on her was her own. Blood was blood, after all. It all felt the same.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you into a bath. We could both use one.”

Derek didn’t protest the idea. He didn’t protest when Allison hitched his arm up over her shoulder and led him, limping and swaying, into the master bathroom. He didn’t protest when she settled him on the toilet lid and began peeling his ruined clothes off. He didn’t protest when the movements pulled at tender wounds, even as he bit back small pained noises that threatened to bring back the shaking in Allison’s hands.

They’d been steady during the fight. She was always steady during the critical moments, she made sure of that. It was in the after that she let herself fall apart a little bit. When the danger was past and everybody she cared about was safe, _that_ was when she could feel all the panic and helplessness that would cripple her in the moment, only worse for being denied so long.

Compartmentalization was a bitch like that.

But it wasn’t time for that yet. Not until Derek was in the clear. Not until Derek had healed from all the blows he had literally _thrown himself_ in the way of.

Allison fiddled with the water settings and turned on the shower—better to get the blood off _before_ filling the tub. As she pulled off her own dirty clothes, she took the opportunity to breathe a few more times, hidden from Derek’s eyes if not his ears or his nose. She had no doubt he could hear the anxious thump of her heart and smell the residual sourness of fear.

He didn’t comment though. His head was down when she turned back, shoulders tight like he was still bracing for the next hit.

He looked up sharply at Allison’s touch, like he’d forgotten where he was and that she was there too. He relaxed into her hand on his cheek, eyes closing, so at least he wasn’t too far in his head.

“Think you can stand for a minute?”

“I’ll manage.”

He made it into the shower with just a steadying hand. He turned into the spray with a sigh. It sluiced over the planes of his face, tripped over the fullness of his lips, traced its way down the line of his neck, leaving pale, clean lines in its wake.

Allison tore her eyes away from the sight and stepped in after him. She tugged one of the hand towels off its hook, reaching around Derek to wet it. The water was wonderfully hot but Derek’s skin was hotter as she began dragging the cloth over it. Across the span of his shoulders, the jut of his shoulder blades, the wide expanse of his ribs.

He turned this way and that under her careful hands, too exhausted to resist or complain. Every pass of the towel left a swath of white behind it, cutting through the dust and dirt and blood, and pink-grey swirled down the drain. Its disappearance calmed something in Allison.

The skin on Derek’s side was purple and green but unbroken now, smooth under her fingers. When she knelt down to check, the thigh wound was a twisted rope of a scar that she knew would fade by morning. She rinsed the last of the blood from the area and wrung out the cloth.

Once the water ran clear from head to foot, they shuffled around each other in the small space so that Allison could take the spray. She started to scrub herself down perfunctorily, very ready to not be standing anymore, but a large hand caught hold of hers. Allison tensed up on instinct, but Derek was a warm and familiar presence at her back and she turned over her shoulder to give him a questioning look.

He managed a half-smile for her. “You missed a spot.”

Allison huffed a weak laugh. She let him push her hair out of the way so that he could wash her back. The cloth was just a little scratchy but Derek’s touch was firm and gentle at once and leached the tension from her muscles bit by bit.

She was swaying on her feet by the time the water suddenly disappeared. It gushed out over her feet instead and Derek reached a foot around hers to nudge the plug into the drain.

They had to help each other sit down so neither of them fell over; exhaustion made them both clumsy and unbalanced but they made it, one leaning back in each end and their legs tangled together. The faucet stuck out over Allison’s shoulder but she didn’t care because she was finally off her feet for the first time in seven hours. As the hot water rose up around her, she let herself melt into it. She almost didn’t think to turn it off before it overflowed.

For a minute they both just sat, soaking in the quiet. Derek’s hand brushed against hers under the surface and he pulled it up, thumb running lightly over the scrapes along her knuckles. He frowned.

Allison shook her head preemptively. “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t give me that look.”

“What look?”

Allison was unimpressed. “That ‘you should take better care of yourself so you don’t get hurt’ look.”

“I don’t give you that look.”

“You so do, and you don’t get to do it tonight. Not after that stunt you pulled earlier.”

Derek frowned harder. “What stunt?”

“The stunt where you threw yourself in front of a monster’s claws.”

“Claws that were heading straight for Liam,” Derek reminded her.

Allison pulled her hand out of Derek’s, shrugging her way into a more upright position, and said, “Claws that would’ve gotten Liam in the _shoulder._ It wasn’t exactly a mortal blow in the making."

“So I should’ve just let him get hurt?”

Allison rubbed hands over her face. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

She dropped her hands with a splash and just looked at Derek, at the way he managed to curl in on himself even laid out like this. He didn’t usually have any qualms about being naked, or being naked together, but he shifted under her gaze now like he felt exposed for once. He was avoiding her eye.

“Just,” she started, struggling to find words when most of her just wanted to cry. “Why did you put yourself in that position? You were hurt way worse by getting in the middle of it than Liam would’ve been in the first place. And besides, Liam doesn’t need your protection. He is every bit as strong and as...as _durable_ as you are. He can take a hit and heal from it.”

“He shouldn’t have to.”

“And you should?” she shot back.

That surprised him enough to make him look at her. But he didn’t seem to have an answer for her. He opened his mouth but closed it again without saying anything. He looked pale and worn down and painfully unsure. He looked _small._ A fit man nearing thirty shouldn’t be able to look so young or so lost, but he did and it left Allison’s chest feeling hollow and scooped out.

The water nearly sloshed over the lip of the tub as Allison closed the distance between them, insinuating herself between Derek’s legs and hooking her own over so she was almost sitting in his lap. It wasn’t the most comfortable position in the cramped space but it put her near enough to take his face in her hands, to make absolutely sure that he looked her in the eye, and that was what mattered.

“I’m not saying that I wanted Liam to get hurt,” Allison said. “I would never want that, not for anyone. But Derek, I don’t want _you_ to get hurt either. None of us do. You didn’t see Scott and Stiles’ faces when you went down, did you? God, you didn’t see _Liam’s_ face when he realized what had happened.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Derek asked, hands sliding down Allison’s sides, around to her lower back to hold her in place. To keep her close. “The wounds may heal quickly but they still hurt. He’s just a kid. He doesn’t deserve that.”

Allison almost threw her hands up in defeat. "Neither do you!” she said. “Just because you’re not twenty-two anymore, that doesn’t mean—”

“It’s not about age, it’s that he’s—”

“He’s what? He’s undeserving of suffering and you’re not? He’s _innocent_ and you’re not?”

Derek’s mouth clicked shut, jaw clenching as he tried to turn away. Allison didn’t let him. She held his chin in place and waited impatiently for his eyes to come back to hers.

“Derek Hale, don’t you dare tell me that you deserve to feel this pain,” Allison said, slowly and clearly, “because that’s bullshit. You are a good fucking person and you deserve to be safe and whole. Do you understand that?”

She could hear the way Derek swallowed hard, see the way his eyes shifted guiltily, feel the tension in his body. But she didn’t let him pull away. Not once in the three years they had been together had she let him pull away from her and she wasn’t going to start now, not with this.

“I mean it, Derek,” she said, and this time her voice broke. “You can’t keep putting yourself in danger like that. You just can’t. I can’t take it, okay? I can’t watch you get hurt over and over again, more than anyone else in the pack, because you think you have to make up for something. You _don’t_ and this isn’t fair, not to me or to the pack and definitely not to you.”

The shaking was back, not just in her hand but the rest of her too, making ripples in the cooling bathwater. Her breath hitched in her throat and Derek’s arms tightened around her but that wasn’t enough to stem the tide of emotion held back too long. She could still see so clearly the way his entire body had jerked as the claws had sunk into him, the way he had collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the slack-jawed look of shock and pain. She couldn’t stop seeing it.

“Allison,” he tried, but she cut him off, fighting through the tears that made it so much harder to see that he was okay, that he was right here in front of her.

“You don’t need to save everyone, okay?” she said. “Especially when they don’t need saving! You don’t need to be everyone’s savior to be worth anything, Derek.” She jabbed a trembling finger into his chest. “You deserve to look out for your goddamn self once in a while instead of throwing yourself on any sword you can find.”

Derek curled his hand around hers, laying her palm flat against his chest and holding it there. He tried saying her name again but that wasn’t what she wanted. That wasn’t what she needed to hear right now.

“Please tell me you understand that. Please, Derek, because I can’t see you go down like that again. _Jesus,_ Derek, I thought you were dead.”

That admission broke the dam. All the fear she hadn’t felt at the time because she’d needed to make the shot, needed to be calm and steady, needed to draw and sight and release—it hit her like a tidal wave now and she was gasping against the vice gripe it had on her chest. For who knew how long there was nothing but too small lungs and the utter, irrational certainty that Derek was going to die and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Through it all, Derek talked to her. Just a steady stream of quiet nothings, whispered into her hair as he held her tight against his chest. It wasn’t much but it was something to hold onto, a reminder that he wasn’t gone, that she hadn’t actually lost him in the end. It was enough.

She came back to herself in pieces, like she always did. Rational thought was the last to make a reappearance. She found herself clinging to Derek, halfway submerged in what was by now only a lukewarm bath. The parts of her above the waterline were cold and her knees were aching from their awkward position.

Allison pulled away slowly. Derek seemed just as reluctant to let her go, but he didn’t stop her. He knew better than to do that in the aftermath. He watched as she rinsed the tear tracks from her face and squeezed the water out of her hair. He offered her a steadying hand as she climbed out to grab their towels.

They dried off in the sort of silence that was too heavy to feel quiet. Derek kept reaching out touch her and pulling back at the last second, leaving her with bare brushes of his fingertips that made her shiver. It wasn’t until they were in their sleepwear and back in their bedroom that he closed the distance between them.

He kissed her forehead first and lingered there a moment before dipping down to find her lips. His hands were warm against her cold cheeks, strong now where they had been so shaky earlier.

“I’m sorry that I scared you,” he said finally. “That I scared everyone. I’m sorry that I don’t know how to make myself my own first priority.”

“You don’t have to be the first,” Allison told him. “Just...maybe you could try not being the absolute last.”

Derek laughed a bit. “I guess that’s fair. I can work toward that.”

Allison brought one of Derek’s hands around to kiss his palm. “Please. Because I don’t think I could handle losing another person that I love.”

“You won’t lose me,” he said with a kind of confidence that Allison had never known, not in matters like this.

He flicked off the lamp and pulled her down into the bed, wrapping her up in his arms until he was all she knew. With his breath warm on her neck and his heartbeat steady against her back, there was no denying that he was alive, that he was okay. With one last deep breath, Allison laced her fingers with his where they lay against her stomach and closed her eyes.

They were going to be fine.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr](http://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/174934154756/dallison-and-taking-a-bath-together)


End file.
